The embodiment relates to an electrode member and a touch panel including the same.
Recently, a touch panel, which performs an input function through the touch of an image displayed on a display device by an input device such as a stylus pen or a finger, has been applied to various electronic appliances
The touch panel may be mainly classified into a resistive touch panel and a capacitive touch panel. In the resistive touch panel, glass is shorted with an electrode due to the pressure of the input device so that a touch point is detected. In the capacitive touch panel, the variation in capacitance between electrodes is detected when a finger of the user is touched on the capacitive touch panel, so that the touch point is detected.
In the resistive type touch panel, the repeated use thereof may degrade the performance thereof, and cause scratches. Accordingly, the interest on the capacitive type touch panel representing superior endurance and having a long lifespan is increased.
Meanwhile, although indium tin oxide (ITO) has been most extensively used for an electrode of the touch panel, ITO has a limitation in the realization of low-resistance required for a large-area touch panel. Therefore, recently, a transparent electrode based on a mesh-shape metal thin film has been spotlighted.
Accordingly, studies and research has been conducted on materials to be substituted for ITO, and, recently, various materials such as carbon nanotube (CNT), Ag nanowire, and graphene have been developed.
A conventional metal mesh scheme is to form a mesh-shape metal pattern through a printing scheme using metal ink. The metal mesh scheme is disclosed in Korean Unexamined Publication No. 10-2012-0018059.
However, in the case of the metal mesh formed through the conventional printing scheme, the realization of a fine pattern is difficult. In other words, according to the printing scheme, the minimum line width may be limited in the range of about 3 μm to about 5 μm. The permeability of the metal mesh fabricated in the above scheme is degraded, and the metal lines are viewed, so that a problem occurs in visibility.
Meanwhile, in the conventional touch panel, a transparent electrode pattern has been formed through a photoresist scheme. In other words, after depositing a transparent electrode material and a metal material on a substrate, exposure, development, and etching processes are performed to form the wire electrode pattern and the sensing electrode pattern.
However, when the wire electrode pattern and the sensing electrode pattern are formed in the above scheme, the number of processes is increased, and the processes are complex, so that the process efficiency may be reduced.
In order to solve the above problem, recently, the transparent electrode using the metal thin film mesh has been spotlighted. However, even if the transparent electrode pattern is formed by using the metal thin film mesh, since the photoresist scheme must be used in order to form the wire electrode pattern, the efficiency in the fabricating process may be lowered.